The Gardens of Covington

by Joan A. Medlicott

  “Dinner, lunch, what difference does it make what you call it?” Brenda smoothed her cotton shirtwaist dress and walked toward the men. “Maggie Anson’s made a big issue of it when she said she wouldn’t be going today, and it wasn’t because of Hannah’s speech at the church hall.” She mimicked Maggie. “ ‘Folks from the North can’t even learn to call a meal by its right name. Dinner’s noontime and supper’s the evenin’ meal, we all know that, except those Yankees.’ God, that woman exasperates me.”

  “Put it out of your head now, Brenda,” her husband said.

  Molly Lund, the Tates’ daughter, her husband, Ted, and their sons, ages five and six, headed the parade of three cars that lined up behind Bob’s Jeep in the ladies’ driveway. Pastor Johnson rode with the Tates. Representing Brenda’s cousins from the Craine family were Alma and Frank, their daughter, Claudia, and their ten-year-old granddaughter, Paulette.

  Grace counted eleven, plus seven already there, and wondered how she could eliminate several of the tables. Then she saw that Bob and Russell were in the process of joining two of them into one long one. Grace moved toward the guests, a wide smile on her face. “Welcome. I’m so glad you came.” Having worried that no one would show up, she was delighted to see those who had.

  “Velma Herrill wanted to come real bad, but Charlie’s got a frightful bad cough and fever, can’t hardly breathe,” Brenda said as they hugged. “The Ansons.” She shrugged. “Well, you know, and the Maxwells don’t come out for anything.” She spoke rapidly, nervously. “Still, Maxwell sends help when anyone has a problem, like when the Herrills’ barn burned, and when we had that mother of all storms, winter of ’93. Snow piled halfway up our front door. His plows came and opened Cove Road and plowed everyone’s driveways. But”—she shook her head—”they don’t socialize.” Brenda slipped an arm about Grace’s shoulder and kissed her cheek. “Never you mind. We’ll have us the best old time.” She looked toward the brightly decorated tables. “Isn’t this just so festive.”

  The farmhouse door slammed. Hannah stepped onto the porch with a pitcher in each hand. At the top of the steps she halted.

  “How about you give me a pitcher to carry, Hannah?” Brenda hastened toward her.

  “Come see the house,” Grace said and moments later, Alma Craine, her daughter, Claudia Prinze, and Molly Lund followed Grace up the steps. Tubs of ferns and pots of orange impatiens clustered at either end of the porch. In one conversational grouping, a hanging swing shifted lightly in the breeze. Facing the swing were two high-backed white wicker chairs. At the side of the porch nearest the great oak, three white wicker rockers were positioned in a semicircle around a low table. “We have tea out here every afternoon, weather permitting.” Grace gestured toward the rockers.

  Alma touched an orange impatiens in a tub near the door. “My impatiens took the cold we had the other night and died.”

  “They’re protected up here on the porch,” Grace replied. “The western sun warms them.”

  That settled, Alma moved cautiously, slowly behind the others. She was dressed for church in a blue shirtwaist dress with silver buttons marching from neck to waist, and midheel shoes with clip-on silver buckles. The buttons of her dress strained, and the material puckered, revealing bits of pink slip. Grace fell back to walk beside her. “This kitchen,” she said, “was a mess. The floor had rotted in places. We tore out everything and started over.”

  “Mighty nice.” Alma stood near the doorway. She clasped her arms about her ample chest and looked as if she would bolt any minute.

  Grace showed them the powder room tucked under the stairs.

  “Frank would never fit in here.” Alma giggled, then her hand flew to cover her mouth, and she looked embarrassed.

  “It’s small, I know, but this way we don’t have to be running upstairs all the time,” Grace replied, shutting the door.

  In the dining room, Molly said, “This is such nice wallpaper. Toile’s perfect in here.”

  “Amelia says the color rose soothes her. She chose the wallpaper,” Grace said.

  In the living room, the two younger women admired the antique pine mantel around the fireplace. Grace explained, “This mantel was a complete shambles when Tom and Marie Findley, who did the repairs for us, found it at a yard sale. They refinished it.”

  Standing there with her mouth slightly agape, Alma’s eyes traveled the floor-to-ceiling bookcases framing the fireplace. “So many books.” It sounded more a condemnation than a compliment, as if the space might be better used for something else.

  “Did you know,” Molly asked, “the Herrills used to own this whole side of the valley?”

  Grace looked at her with interest. “I didn’t know that.”

  “They came after the railroad, when the main industry of Madison County was lumber, timbering. Their land was owned, then, by a family named Owens, and they’d over-timbered. Herrill’s grandpa bought it off Owens for a shotgun, a wagon, a set of pots and pans, and a pair of mules. Later, Charlie Herrill’s pa sold a piece to Alma’s father-in-law, and later, these twenty-eight acres to Arthur Furrior.”

  “Hannah and Amelia will be interested to hear that.”

  Claudia stood below Amelia’s prize-winning black-and-white photograph that hung above the mantel. “It’s wonderful. It must take so much patience to get a shot like that.”

  “A good eye. Patience, yes, and luck. Amelia just happened to be on that street at the moment the little girl tumbled off her tricycle. See how the child’s mouth is puckered, getting ready to cry?”

  “I can see why it won first prize for Amelia,” Claudia said.

  No one moved or spoke for several seconds, then Grace said, “Well, why don’t we go out and get ourselves some lunch?”

  Outside, under the great oak, a bountiful buffet filled a table end to end. Grace lifted the ceramic head off of the chicken-shaped tureen. “Pumpkin soup. Please, help yourselves.”

  “Not for me.” Tyler rolled his eyes.

  “Not for me.” Paulette followed suit, as did the Lund boys. Against the protests of their parents, the children piled fried chicken legs on their plates, skinned up their noses at everything else, and trotted pell-mell to sit under the great oak and eat.

  Pastor Johnson said grace. “Bless this food and the friends who share it.” Moments later, he turned appreciative eyes to Grace. “I’ve never had such delicious pumpkin soup.”

  “Grace is a wonderful cook,” Amelia said. “Now, Pastor, you be sure and leave room for the rest of lunch. We’ve got ham, fried chicken, and all kinds of salads.”

  Grace smiled at Pastor Johnson. “I’ll fix you a nice big container of soup to take home for dinner.”

  At the table, talk centered for a time on this year’s low price for the tobacco crop, the growing of an alternative crop like soybeans, the health of Hannah’s new apple trees, which had put on thirteen inches of growth in one season. No one seemed eager to speak of the developers’ offer. Just as well, Grace thought. It’ll only get Hannah riled up, and Grace knew that there would be no stopping Hannah in her determination to preserve Cove Road from development. At that moment she heard Hannah saying, “Yes, Wayne Reynolds has green hands, not just green thumbs.”

  “Lord, remember last year Fourth of July at the park when he knocked into your chair and sent you sprawling?” Harold asked.

  “Inauspicious start,” Hannah replied, “followed by an encore when I toppled over Wayne’s legs in P. J. Prancer’s.”

  “Quite amazing, you two working together now.” Brenda laughed.

  “Since Wayne’s running Hannah’s greenhouse, he’s become like family,” Grace said. Grace liked Wayne. She was glad he had agreed to purchase Hannah’s greenhouse. It had become too much work for her friend, and Hannah was teaching Wayne the marketing and bookkeeping aspects of selling ornamental plants. She was also grateful to Wayne for the way he had helped Hannah after the fire that destroyed the apple orchard. Wayne had prevailed on Hannah to accompany
him to the Reynolds’ homestead up in the northernmost mountains of Madison County, where he and Old Man had generously plied her with sufficient sapling trees to replant the orchard.

  Grace’s musing was interrupted by Harold rising to return to the buffet table for seconds. Amelia joined him. “Let’s move these platters over on our table, and just pass them,” she said.

  With Harold’s help, platters of ham, squash casserole, fried chicken, potato salad, and corn pudding were soon making the rounds.

  In almost no time at all, Tyler and Paulette shoved plates of chicken bones at their parents and raced off to the stream, followed by Molly’s two boys, futilely yelling, “Wait on up, wait on up.”

  The talk turned to ladybugs, which, as the days grew chillier, peppered the ceilings and windowsills of everyone’s homes. “Stinky things. I can’t stand them,” Amelia said. “No matter how we seal the windows, they still get in.”

  “Useless to even try to hold ’em out.” Harold rocked back on his chair. “Little critters squeeze through the tiniest crack, even attic vents.” He shrugged. “Takes gettin’ used to, but they don’t harm none.” Harold brought his chair upright and poured Brenda and then himself another glass of apple cider from a ceramic jug. “Fact is they feed on aphids, good for the garden.”

  “Isn’t there some kind of insecticide or spray I could use around the doors and windows to kill them, or on the ceilings inside? I tried wasp spray. It killed them, all right. In the meantime I thought I’d choke.” Amelia’s hand fastened about the bright blue scarf at her neck.

  “You’ll poison yourself if you keep sprayin’ in the house. Just you brush ’em off the ceilin’, scoop ’em up, and dump ’em back outside,” Harold said. “Ladybugs you save today may be the very ones eatin’ the aphids off your plants next season.”

  Amelia shuddered. “Put them outside? Mais non. There are enough of them out there already.” She brushed her hands together as if she had just discarded a handful of ladybugs. “Even after I vacuum, the smell is everywhere.”

  “Harmonia axyrdidis,” Hannah chimed in. “Brought in as a natural pest control, and now they’re out of control.”

  “Do what with a harmonica?” Pastor Johnson asked.

  “That’s the name of the ladybugs, or in popular usage they’re called Southern Lady Beetle, or Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle,” Hannah said.

  Harold set his glass down and leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I hear tell they have ’em as far north as Canada.”

  A cloud meandered across the bold face of the sun, creating a long shadow that swept across the table and changed the mood. Talk turned from ladybugs to the meeting at the church hall, and the future of Cove Road. Harold shook his head. “I was right and everyone called me an alarmist. Never been called that in my life.” He shrugged.

  Brenda patted her husband’s arm. “No sense to go on about this. Nothin’ you can do. Too nice a day.”

  Hannah slammed one fist into the palm of her other hand. “I don’t believe that. If we band together we can do a lot, even if the local government’s not interested.”

  “Anson wants a peck of money. We folks can’t raise a million dollars,” Harold said. “It’s too big a project for us.”

  “We can’t from our own pockets, Harold, but tracts of land are saved all the time because ordinary people join together. They get out there and march on city hall. They get the press interested, and hopefully some land trust or conservation group gets interested.”

  “Who cares about little old Covington, anyhow?” Ted Lund asked.

  Molly poked his arm.

  Hannah’s face flushed, and her eyes widened and grew increasingly intense. “Maybe some private conservation organization, like the Nature Conservancy.”

  “What’s that?” Ted asked.

  “They raise funds specifically to save land. Sometimes they sell the land to other agencies or the government; sometimes they hold on to it. They own about thirteen hundred preserves worldwide right now. They operate the largest private system of nature sanctuaries in the world. Cove Road Preserve Coalition will turn to them first.”

  Amelia clapped her hands. “You used the name I picked.”

  Hannah nodded. “For starters, however, if we could get on Anson’s land, if we could find one species, a bird, flower, animal that’s endangered, we could ask for a moratorium on the sale, which would give us time.”

  “Well, I’ll be darned.” Harold shook his head and chuckled. “Freeze a deal like you’d freeze fresh-caught fish.”

  No one else picked up the conversation, or asked questions. Grace noted the dull glaze that screened Frank’s and Alma’s eyes, and was glad that Hannah let the issue drop.

  Now and then a yellow leaf wafted onto their table. One settled in Grace’s hair. “Winter’s coming.” Bob lifted the leaf from her hair.

  Across from Harold, Alma sat like a statue, hands in her lap, ignoring or unaware of the traces of pink slip that oozed from between her silver buttons. Frank reached for another fried chicken leg. A twig snapped high above them. Everyone looked up as a squirrel leaped from one branch to another.

  “Squirrel’s stockin’ up for a cold winter,” Pastor Johnson said.

  Ted Lund nodded. “Woolly worms got them a thick coat this year.” The platter of chicken made its round of the table and returned to Amelia.

  The silence felt uncomfortable to Grace, and after a time she said, “I met Lurina Masterson recently.”

  “Well now, how is she?” Harold took out a pipe and a packet of tobacco from his back pocket and began to pack it. Brenda lay her hand on his arm before he could light it.

  “She fell,” Grace said. “Wayne and his grandfather found her. She’s fine, no broken bones or anything. I invited her, and Old Man, and Wayne today. The Reynoldses had a christening to attend over in Tennessee, and Miss Lurina said no.” Lurina would not tolerate Grace calling her Miss Lurina, but when Grace spoke of her to others, she felt compelled, by respect for the woman’s age, to add the Miss.

  “Miss Lurina ain’t left that house since her pa died, couple of years ago. He must of been, what?” Alma Craine spoke for the first time at the table. She looked at Brenda. “About a hundred and two or three, wouldn’t you say?”

  Pastor Johnson’s voice rose. He crossed his hands over his thin chest. “Over a hundred he was. Full church that day. Henry Dobbs up at the funeral home fixed Grover Masterson up real good.” He smiled at the others benignly and shifted in his chair. “Old Grover lyin’ there in his black jacket, all ruddy-faced. He didn’t look near a hundred.”

  Those who had attended the funeral agreed.

  “Church set up a committee for helpin’ Miss Lurina. Ladies doin’ their Christian duty, visitin’ her, takin’ her food, cakes or pies, fruits in season,” Pastor Johnson said.

  Grace was surprised to hear that. “She never speaks of anyone visiting her.”

  “Old lady Lurina don’t like visitors. She’s been known to run ’em off with her shotgun.” Ted Lund leaned his chair back on two legs and grinned. “Ever seen her totin’ that old gun of hers?”

  Grace shook her head no. She’d neither seen anyone visiting nor seen food dropped off, and Lurina had certainly never mentioned it. “Folks really take her food?” she asked.

  “Well,” Alma said, “if they do, they get out of there fast. Old Miss Lurina, she smells bad of mothballs. It could knock you out. Folks just slip round the back and lay the stuff on the kitchen table if the door’s unlocked, or by the door outside.”

  Grace bridled. She’d been aware of the faint odor of mothballs that sometimes issued from Lurina’s clothing. Grace felt heat rising, bringing color to her face. “Lurina doesn’t always smell of mothballs, only when she wears clothing from the closet where she keeps her best blouses and dresses. She believes that mothballs preserve her clothes.”

  Ted continued. “Miss Lurina ain’t been off that land of hers since her pa died.”

  “A ranger
from the park service comes by regularly to check on her,” Grace said. “I get the sense that Miss Lurina worries that if she’s not at home when the ranger stops by, they’ll start bulldozing her house.”

  Ted was on a roll. “That old shotgun of Miss Lurina’s is about as long as she is tall. I heard she stands on her porch holdin’ that shotgun at that ranger fellow. Tells him to get off her land.” He laughed. “Ain’t no bullets in that gun, but that Yankee ranger fellow don’t know that.”

  “They can’t take Miss Lurina’s land while she’s alive, can they?” Molly Lund turned to her mother.

  “No, honey,” Brenda said, looking at her daughter. “Not until they’re sure she’s dead and the proper papers are filed.”

  “Not leaving her house in years.” Molly shook her head. “Someone needs to tell her the truth about that situation. You should tell her, Grace.”

  Grace nodded. She liked Molly. Lurina would like Molly. Molly taught math at North Buncombe High School in Weaverville. Her husband, Ted, sold used cars over in Asheville, a thirty-five-minute drive from Covington. With Harold’s help, they had built a home on land her parents gave to them as a wedding present ten years earlier. Grace looked at Molly. She found the young woman intelligent, bright, and much better educated than her husband. He’s too young a man to have such a paunch, and Molly’s so trim. Then she caught herself and thought, who am I to talk? I have my own love handles.

  “You visit her, Grace?” Brenda asked, drawing Grace out of her musing.

  Grace smiled and nodded. “Yes. We sit out on her porch sometimes and swap stories. She tells me about being a girl in Covington, about walking barefoot on dirt roads, helping her father build the barn, delivering calves. I tell her about Dentry, and bring her cookies or sometimes dinner. Miss Lurina finds the idea of stuffing a meatball with a prune both funny and ridiculous.”

  “Sounds right strange to me too,” Alma muttered.

  “I took her some, and she actually enjoyed them. She keeps chickens, did you know that?”